Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Why Superman Sucks

This article may not be about baseball, but it does sort of get to the heart of why I never really cared for players like Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. all that much:

What's the virtue in acting like a badass hero if you were born with the ability to be a badass hero? What's more impressive: the football player who trains for years and years just to play one game of pro football, or the guy who was born with innate athletic talent?

The answer is obvious, of course – powers earned are infinitely more impressive than intrinsic superpowers. Even though many superheroes do not "choose" their powers – from Spider-Man to Green Lantern, it's usually just happy accident that these normal schlubs get turned into superheroes – it's still a hell of a boring cop-out to simply be born with the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It's just not terribly impressive, and requires zero effort. If Superman is capable of catching bullets with his teeth mere moments after landing on Earth, isn't that a lot more boring than Bruce Wayne training for years and years, and using most of his fortune, to become Batman?

Don't you have to consider the ability to pitch to pinpoint locations while variably adding and subtracting velocity an inate ability? Seems to me that someone with that ability could pitch to a mitt while the catcher closed his eyes...

No way, dude. Maddux's parents were killed by Joe Chill with a baseball bat when they were leaving an evening showing of "Bang the Drum Slowly." Upon their deaths, he vowed to have perfect control so as to never let anyone do damage with a bat again.

Despite the Keown story the other day, Maddux is really a dark, conflicted soul.

In Super--er, Barry's defense, "talent" ain't enough. Bonds made it to the bigs on talent. He won 7 MVPs because he worked harder than everyone else. Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Roger Federer, Michael Schumacher talented supermen all, but what they most have in common is their intensity, focus, desire, and commitment. They have Batman's drive (and Superman's powers).

No denying that, M.C. I don't mean to make too much of the analogy, as none of those guys would have been worth a Dale Berra if they weren't focused, hard workers. This is just one of those instances when I fall victim, albeit willingly, to a cliched narrative of heredity over merit, because it satisfies my prejudices to do so.